How to Start Your Freelance Writing Career – a Real-life Case Study

Today I want to share a real-life case study with you, but it won’t actually be a story-like description of how things got done. Instead, I’m taking a more advice-driven (step-by-step) approach, where you can take the things I’m sharing and apply them to your own situation (career) right away.

However, this still is a description of things that happened to a real-life freelance writer – me.

My story of how I Started Freelance Writing Career in 6 steps.

1. Create your expertise

I’m not talking about “finding” your area, I’m talking about “creating” it, and there’s a big difference between the two.

Finding your area seems much easier. It involves doing some soul searching, figuring out what you’re knowledgeable about, and then writing some articles around that topic.

When you’re creating your expertise, on the other hand, you have to pick an area you’re passionate about, and then build your expertise from the ground up by acquiring knowledge.

Now here’s the funny part. The second approach is actually one that can bring you better results. For example, Michael Jordan was not great at basketball when he first started playing. He was even rejected from his high school team. Michael Jordan became the legend he is because he chose to create his expertise consciously.

What I’m trying to say here is that you don’t have to write about things you’re already knowledgeable about. Instead, pick whatever area you want, and then become an expert in it.

2. Start writing

Chances are that no one will want to hire you until you have a portfolio of some kind. And this is quite understandable … why would anyone believe that you can actually write in an engaging way, right?

A blog is a crucial step in this process. Things will be a lot tougher without a blog! The biggest benefit of owning such a thing is that you no longer need a CV or anything, your blog becomes the best CV possible.

3. Share free articles and advice

“Free” is the most powerful word in the English language (according to Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational). People simply can’t resist to receive something free … even if they don’t need it.

But you’re in an even better situation as you will be sharing things that people actually do need – free articles and advice. And by free articles I mean guest posts.

When it comes to free advice it’s even simpler. You can pick your target, look around at what they’re doing, and send them a simple email containing some tips on how things can be improved.

The exact advice you can send depends on the niche you’re in. For example, if you’re in the website development niche, you can send some advice on what design changes to implement in order to improve the conversion rates on a given site.

Such an approach can be really beneficial as people naturally want to return the favor when you do something nice for them. This is how I got one of my freelance projects.

If you’ve been on the internet for a while then you probably have some online friends or business partners who can help you get things going. Simply sending them an email noting that you’re now taking new freelance clients might just be enough to get you a new project.

But don’t make it a “hire me” mail. Focus on providing some info about your services and don’t try to pitch anything specific. This will enable your contact to send such a message further to their own contacts.

5. Respond to job offers

Believe it or not, but this is still one of the best approaches around to find both individual sites that pay you to write as well as complete fulltime jobs. You can go to various job boards (like the one on ProBlogger), Craigslist, and search for interesting projects.

Then, when you’re sending your offer, don’t forget to mention your website and all the articles you have published around the internet. This really works great as a portfolio.

Once someone sees that you’re a popular writer with publications on some major sites they no longer need a traditional CV…

Create a “hire me” page and LinkedIn profile

This is something I have yet to do, so I’m only listing it here to make the message complete.

LinkedIn is the biggest professional social network around. Listing yourself as a freelance writer there, and creating a quality profile can surely help you a lot.

Creating a “hire me” page on your site is a no-brainer as well. This page will be the first one people visit to find out what you have to offer. Remember to list your best articles, your area of expertise, and any references you have.

You may think that this doesn’t feel like a real case study, but I can honestly say that this is exactly what I did, step by step. I’m maybe not the biggest freelance writer around, but I’m still doing just fine.

As you can see, most of my advice revolves around offering stuff for free. This is not a coincidence. To be honest, I think that I offer 30% of my articles for free, just for the purposes of brand building and spreading the word around.

What’s your take on this? Do you have a plan on how to launch your freelance writing career?

This is a guest post by Karol K., A freelance blogger and writer. If you want to find out what he’s up to and get some top quality freelance writing advice, feel free to visit YoungPrePro, or hit him up on Titter (@carlosinho).

Comments

Very Nice Tips under freelance writing. It will be useful for freelancer content writers. But It is a very challenging for me working as a full time writer and doing freelance writing too. Please suggest.

Freelancing..the word seems literal when it comes to Indian clients. Everyone wants a dynamic, imaginative, authentic, “creative” content, but alas! where is the money?
People are willing to pay to designers, programmers even so called SEO experts, but content writers? why to pay? It’s an easy peesy job..isn’t it?

I left my job and started freelancing and found difficulties in things which were beyond my planning. So, I switched over to magazines freelance writing, and a bit on line content.

Some real time studies of mine:

1. Don’t write for people who are too gentle and convoluted in their sentences
2. Nobody pays you advance but don’t do work in bulk, it is highly possible that in the end of the day, you are left with an empty bowl
3.Mix your work with long work (take around 2-3 hours) and small (hardly 30 mins)
4. don’t listen to clients who pay you peanuts and ask for creative, imaginative, original etc. article. Don’t think, rewrite it and get your payment. period.
5. if you are not working on your own project(s), better to do a job, freelancing the best who are involved in own projects
6. Don’t run after money, rather utilize the time on your own blogs and website and other recreational activities

I have shared my blogs and websites and used to write for them, but after google panda updation not getting organic visitors from search engines. What should I do? It is hard now to get visitors to your website. I am just facing problem with it.

Thanks for sharing your personal case study. Mine was a little different, but I think everyone’s approach is unique, so by no means am I suggesting mine was better. For what it’s worth, though, I have never guest posted. Instead, I started out by taking paid assignments on a bidding site. The money wasn’t great at first, but at least it was money and over 3 years later, I am still getting work from some of the clients I found there, but am getting paid almost 4 times as much for it.

I agree with you about creating a niche, but here, too, my approach was a little different. In fact, it was more of an accident than an approach. I was asked to write some content about home improvements; then I was asked to write more and so on until now, 500 odd articles later, I really am a home improvement expert.

Thanks again for an informative post. By sharing our experiences, we can help each other make that elusive freelance writing dream come true.